This problem still makes up a big slice of the denial we all will experience in a critical situation.

Moreover, I find this denial to exist in most of us practitioners of some empty hands system, and how it is rationalized in dangerous ways.

Take the condition black

Black 500-1

Condition Black wasn’t part of Cooper’s original system either, but was added by the U.S. Marine Corps. When you reach Condition Black, your heart is beating faster than 175 BPM. At this level of arousal, a fighter — even a well-trained one — experiences catastrophic breakdown of mental and physical performance.

In addition to tunnel vision, auditory exclusion, and deterioration of complex motor skills, other symptoms are present in Condition Black.

Most fighters will experience bladder and bowel voiding — in other words, they poop and pee their pants. In high-stress, life-or-death situations, sphincter and bladder control just aren’t a priority for your body. Moreover, it wants to get rid of as much waste as it can so you’re in a better position to fight or run.

At this point, the decisions your physical body makes are overriding any cognitive ones. Lt. Col. Grossman actually discusses this issue in great detail in On Combat. While many soldiers and fighters won’t admit publicly that they messed themselves, in anonymous surveys conducted after WWII, one-quarter of soldiers admitted they peed themselves during combat and one-eighth admitted to defecating. Grossman believes the number was likely even higher than that.

Extreme vasoconstriction is also typically present in Condition Black. Vasoconstriction is when the blood vessels narrow to constrict blood flow. In life-or-death situations, your body wants most of your blood to stay near vital organs and large muscles that can be used to fight or run.

One benefit of this is that if you were to sustain a wound, vasoconstriction helps limit the amount of bleeding you experience. Extreme vasoconstriction causes people to look “white with fear” as all the blood has been shunted away from the skin’s surface to more vital parts of the body. While this is a survival mechanism, it unfortunately leads to deterioration of complex motor skills.

Another physical reaction is that your forebrain (the executive part of your brain) shuts down and your more primitive middle brain takes over.

Grossman calls this the “puppy dog” brain. Without executive functioning, you’re susceptible to irrational fighting or fleeing. As an example of this type of irrational behavior, many soldiers fighting in the frontlines of WWI and WWII reported seeing comrades run out from behind protection and into enemy fire without any rhyme or reason. As Grossman puts it, “in Condition Black you can run and you can fight like a big, hairless, clawless bear, but that is about all you are capable of doing.”

In that same study conducted by Dr. Artwohl mentioned above, he found that a very small percentage of police offers experienced freezing, or temporary paralysis during a deadly force encounter. In these cases, the body doesn’t fight or run, it just stops cold, leaving the fighter very vulnerable

Condition Black wasn’t part of Cooper’s original system either, but was added by the U.S. Marine Corps.

Again I have found a certain arrogance in martial arts practitioners in their denial of this, simply because they feel it will not apply to them because of their 'proper training' in their 'superior style' etc.

Now why would the US Marine Corps believe in this? What do they know, right?

Some martial artists really believe that they are better trained on a dojo floor _ than US Marines.

I don't know how to express myself without sounding like an ass. The modern western educated sports oriented teachers focussed on technique and physics, while the tunnel rat, the green beret, the sniper spotter and the bodyguard considered the mental/internal awareness teachings to be the heart of the matter.

My approach to training is not to identify at what level my response to threat is but instead to train to a point my response fails. I train to the point of failure , assess and try again. The goal is to train thru failure, recognize limitations and address them.

Empty hand to firearms we seek to stumble to fail. Identify and address the failure and move forward. We do the same with our equipment. It pains me to do so but we operated our firearms without cleaning until we consistently experienced failure to fire. An oh fuk moment in a gun fight. Forcing a weapons transition after stoppage response fails. Dirty AR15 platforms 4500 rounds in minus 30C weather failed! Dirty ammo cold weather and CLP and the bolt carrier failed to function. We repeated the process with other cleaning regimes and managed 6500 rounds to failure in minus 30 degree weather with hoppes number nine solvent and Burkes gun oil, and the same dirty ammo.

We found the limits of our platform, we seek our limitations to perform. We grow thru failure. Adrenaline stress exposure and fitness is part of the puzzle. However I believe the best lessons in training are the omg moments where we know in a real situation we are already dead because we failed. If we are not dying in training we have not training! We only showed up to do what we can already do. We train to improve, this involves recognizing our weakness and addressing them. That's colored oh fuk, if our training does not go there we think we are wasting training time.

There's a link there that shows videos of how to get out of zip ties. I never knew any of that. I'm not trying to say it's important - and I haven't tested those methods yet (But, I will, you betcha') but I'm surprised I never considered it, never heard a damn thing about it.